Wednesday, September 24, 2003

New Class / Student Blogs - Audio-Visual English groups

I have decided to use weblogs with my audio visual English groups this year, especially as we have been encouraged to take them into the computer room for classes. I want to follow a similar system as Bee has with her students (see side-bar link) , but instead of a class blog, I think I'm going to run a tutor blog.

I am going to ask the learners to set up student blogs (which will also be part of their evaluation) and invite me to them That way, I can set up a dialogue with them.

I am thinking of encouraging student-student interaction through comments system like Blogspeak (the system running here) instead of having a class blog, but I haven't fully made my mind up yet...

With this system, I'm even thinking of abandoning the coursebook (at least with one of the groups), in the best Dogme fashion, especially as coursebooks are generally received very negatively by these groups. Perhaps using weblogs could be a way of 'getting the students to write their own coursebooks' - I will certainly try to encourage student-generated materials, (using weblogs) this year whatever else I decide to do.